Lines of Thinking - May 2017: “Hello, My Name is Allen Ginzberg”

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“Lines of Thinking” is a monthly feature from College President Tom Manley.

May, 2017

Here are three encounters with the American poet Allen Ginsberg; one of them explains the title I have given to this Lines of Thinking.

1.

During the two decades I worked at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, Allen Ginsberg came to campus a number of times to give readings and participate in workshops and other events. On one occasion his friend Gary Snyder joined him and together, through their conversation, poetry, prayer, political critique, chanting, story telling, singing and music, they created a cloud of pensive energy that seemed to linger pleasantly for days and weeks after they had gone.

After one of the readings, I worked up the courage to ask Allen to sign a copy of the “Kaddish,” his sweeping elegy to his mother, Naomi, who had struggled with mental illness and had lived her last years in difficult circumstances and places. More than his remarkable and perhaps more famous poem “Howl,” this was a piece that overthrew me with its brave, sustained look into a darkness and pain that was deeply personal, sensual, ugly, real and, finally, sweetly human.

When I handed over my copy for his signature, he looked at the book, back and front, resting it a second in his palm as if to weigh it, and then opened to a place where the pages naturally seemed to separate. After glancing at the page, he looked up and held my gaze for a few seconds before taking a pen from my hand to sign and return the book in silence.

2

Allen Ginsberg told the story of being mugged in New York on the way to his publisher. He was carrying a brief case when he was pushed down into a stairwell, roughed up, robbed of watch and wallet, and left sprawled on his back, spectacles askew, brief case spread open and ransacked for valuables, hundreds of manuscript pages emptied over his body like giant bank notes, fluttering in an eddy of summer air.

3

A work-study student sat at a welcome table writing nametags for people attending a reception in honor of Allen Ginsberg. The student greeted each guest, asked their name and then wrote it on one of the readymade blank labels printed with “Hello, My Name is.” Guests would then stick the nametag on their jacket, dress or shirt.

During the reception I saw Allen Ginsberg with a plate of grapes, speaking with a group of students. He also had a nametag and it read, “Hello, My Name is Allen Ginzberg.” He wore it all night and the next day, too. An artist friend of mine, Michael Woodcock, somehow coaxed it from him and eventually made a painting of just the nametag.

Here are two excerpts from the poem “Kaddish”; the beginning lines and the last lines.

Kaddish

For Naomi Ginsberg, 1894 – 1956

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny

pavement of Greenwich Village.

downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I’ve been up all night, talking, talking,